Anne West began teaching at RISD in 1996 – three years after earning a PhD in Art and Media Studies from the University of Toronto. Since then her work as a writer, curator, educator and critic has played a defining role in graduate education here.
Within a number of contexts and courses – as instructor, thesis advisor, mentor and critic – West champions the role of thesis writing. Known for fostering rich cross-disciplinary learning environments of inquiry, team building and influence, she teaches seminars such as Mapping the Intelligence of Your Work, Origin Point, Investigations: Betwixt and Between and Graphic Design Graduate Thesis.
West’s pedagogical imperative is to support the individual needs of students by mining the logical bases of their work, helping them to respond to the demands of their ideas in the process of articulating a voice. As a faculty mentor, she curates biannual exhibitions that showcase graduate thesis writing and research. In 2012 she earned the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor accorded to RISD’s most gifted faculty members.
As a writer and curator with research interests in phenomenology and interpretive human studies – including poetics and mapping – West has had projects featured on CBC/Radio-Canada, in museum and gallery exhibition essays in the US and Canada, in art journals and through initiatives with numerous art schools and organizations. Since the publication of her book Mapping the Intelligence of Artistic Work(Moth Press, 2011), her work has become widely recognized by other institutions – both nationally and internationally – for its leadership in the area of writing and creative practice.
West frequently lectures and conducts workshops at other colleges and universities including Northeastern University, Maine College of Art, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Cornish School of Arts, Kentucky School of Art, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Connecticut College, NSCAD University and Wheaton College. She serves on the advisory committee for Mindful Choices, a pedagogical initiative at Clark University funded by the Mellon Foundation and inspired in part by her work.
Courses
Fall 2024 Courses
GRAD
- 031G-01
MAPPING THE INTELLIGENCE OF YOUR WORK
LevelGraduate
UnitArchitecture and Design
Subject Graduate Studies
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
FormatLecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
MAPPING THE INTELLIGENCE OF YOUR WORK
LevelGraduate
UnitArchitecture and Design
Subject Graduate Studies
PeriodFall 2024
Credits3
FormatLecture
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PMInstructor(s): Anne WestLocation(s): Washington Place, Room 310Enrolled / Capacity: 15Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This seminar is for graduate students who are preparing their written thesis. Within the context of this writing-intensive course, we examine the thesis form as an expressive opportunity to negotiate a meaningful integration of our visual work, how we think about it, and how we wish to communicate it to others. In support of this exploration, weekly thematic writing sessions are offered to open the imaginative process and to stimulate creative thinking as a means of discovering the underlying intelligence of our work. In addition, we also engage in individual studio visits to identify and form a coherent 'voice' for the thesis, one that parallels our actual art involvement. Literary communications generated out of artists' and designers' processes are also examined. The outcome of this intensive study is the completion of a draft of the thesis.
The unscripted gap of the “betwixt and between” is a space of great curiosity and charge. This space has captured the imagination of many artists, designers, and writers throughout time. The main interest of this course is to investigate the nature of this space, how it is experienced, understood and given meaning from multiple viewpoints in art, design, and literature, and the ways it can become a space of significance for our practice as artists and designers. As background to our own research, we examine features of “the between” as it is evoked in theories of liminality, philosophies of spatial poetics and the open work, and the aesthetics and practices of phenomenology, synesthesia, and dialogue. Specific works of artists and designers will also walk us to that space. Centrally we will seek and build upon complex ideas raised through the course as we open to qualities of human understanding necessary to meet this fragile world of shifting borders, ecologies, and identities.
